As much as the media leans on Twitter as an instant public-opinion barometer, the microblogging site's users really aren't representative of the nation at large. ... [T]he most consistent bias that Pew found was not toward liberals or conservatives. It was a bias against, well, almost everything.

We can't assume readers will figure out that people on Twitter are younger and more cynical than the general populace? None of this is breaking news.

Click to expand...

No, we can't. People read these stories and they, I would guess, assume that they are representative of public opinion. You're talking about the same general public that believes movie commercials are a good representation of critical response. I don't know how many times I've heard, "Supposedly it's getting great reviews" about a movie that got roundly torched. Why? Because the commercial cherry-picks reviewer quotes. And a lot of people don't get that.

But readers like those stories. Readers click and share those stories. Readers like to participate in those stories, then they share them even more if they are chosen to be part of those stories.

And, yes, those stories provide easy secondary pieces for breaking news. Is that so wrong? It would be if we were ignoring the main story, the real reporting. But here's something that can be compiled by an online producer. And most of these stories pop up for inane events, not real news. (I'm including the state of the union and presidential debates in this category because they aren't actually important.) Your readers want Oscars coverage. Why be so uptight that you can't provide them with a slice of social media reaction? Pull a few witty quips and a few decent insights so that your readers don't have to go through thousands of tweets. It's a service.

We have to be about more than reporting the news these days. We have to engage readers and provide service journalism. Otherwise we'll lose them to the places willing to give them what they want.